Lists

Section A

Dr. Emmanuel S. Pilli

Associate Professor, CSE
Containers
 A Container is an entity which contains multiple data items
 It is also known as a collection or a compound data type
 Lists, Sets, Tuples and Dictionaries are container data types

 The two types of basic data structures / containers in

Python are Sequences and Collections
Sequences and Collections
 Sequence is a group of items with a deterministic ordering.
The order in which we put them in is the order in which we
get an item out from them.
 Collection does not have a deterministic ordering. The
ordering is arbitrary, but physically, they do have an order.
 There are six built-in types of sequences – strings, lists,
tuples, bytes, bytearray and range
 There are two types of collections – sets and dictionaries
Lists
 List is a sequence of comma-separated values (items /
elements) between square brackets [ ]
 Each element of a List is assigned a number - its position
or index. The first index is zero.
 Individual elements can be accessed (like elements in a
string) using indices. The index value starts from 0.
 List can shrink or grow during execution of a program
 Lists are also known as dynamic array
Lists
 Lists are commonly used for handling variable length
data
 Lists usually contain similar data types but they can
contain dissimilar data types as well
 Items can be repeated in a List, duplicates can exist
 Empty List is also feasible
 Entire List can be printed using the name of the list
 Lists can also be sliced
Looping in Lists
 We can iterate through the list using while or for loop
 colors = ['red', 'blue', 'pink', 'yellow', 'white']
 i=0
 while (i<len(colors)):
 print(colors[i])
 i+=1
 colors = ['red', 'blue', 'pink', 'yellow', 'white']
 for a in colors:
 print(a)
Basic List Operations
 Mutability – Lists are mutable / changeable and can be
updated
 Concatenation – One list can be concatenated
(appended) at the end of another
 Merging – Two lists can be merged to create a new list
 Conversion – A string / tuple / set can be converted to a list
using the list ( ) conversion function
Basic List Operations
 Aliasing – One list can be assigned to the other and both
refer to the same list. Changing one changes the other.
This is shallow copy.
 Cloning – Copying the contents of one list to another. The
two lists refer to different lists though both contain the
same values. Changing one list does not change another.
This is deep copy.
 Searching – An element can be searched using the in
membership operator
List Built-in Functions
 len (lst) Gives the total length or number of elements
 max (lst) Returns the maximum element from the list
 min (lst) Returns the minimum element from the list
 sum (lst) Returns the sum of elements from the list
 any (lst) Returns True if element from the list is True
 all (lst) Returns True if all the elements are True
 del (lst) Deletes element, slice of entire list
 sorted (lst) Returns sorted list, list remains unchanged
 reversed (lst) Used for reversing a list
Basic List Operations
 Identity – Whether two variables are referring to the
same list can be checked using the is identity operator
 Comparison – It is possible to compare contents of two
lists. Comparison is done item by item till there is a
mismatch
 Emptiness – We can check if a list is empty using a not
operator.
List Methods
 list.append(obj) Appends object obj to list
 list.count(obj) Returns count of how many times obj occurs in list
 list.extend(seq) Appends the contents of seq to list
 list.index(obj) Returns the lowest index in list that obj appears
 list.insert(index, obj) Inserts object obj into list at offset index
 list.pop(obj=list[-1]) Removes and returns last object or obj from list
 list.remove(obj) Removes object obj from list
 list.reverse() Reverses objects of list in place
 list.sort([func]) Sorts objects of list, use compare func if given